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275 pages PDF format
Download Report (from eSellerate)
$188 for a single report, $388 for the report and a site license with the right to make copies within your organization.
(No shipping/handling fees will be added: it's an immediate download directly from the server.)
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Summary
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This report is based on usability research with 90 children, who varied by age (3–12 years old) and by country of origin (mainly United States, but some tests conducted in Israel to ensure international scope of the study).
We tested the way kids use real sites designed for children as well as their use of the kids' areas of mainsteam websites. The report contains 130 design guidelines that will make websites more suited for children and easier for them to use.
The guidelines are based on usability tests of the following sites:
- ABC news for Kids
- Alfy
- Amazon.com
- AmericanGirl.com
- Bakugan.com
- Barbie-EverythingGirl.com
- Belmont Bank Kids' corner
- Bonus
- Boom
- Cartoon Network
- Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose
- Crayola.com
- kids.Discovery.com
- FifiAndTheFlowerTots.com
- Fisher Price
- Free Zone
- Fun Brain
- Galim
- Game Brain
- Game Goo
- GoGirlsOnly.org (Girl Scouts)
- Harry Potter (scholastic.com/harrypotter)
- kids.Hasbro.com/playskoolkids
- kids.Hasbro.com/hasbrokids
- HermansHomepage.com
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory
- Jitterbug.tv
- Kids Korner
- Kids.co.il
- Kids.com
- The Kidz Page
- Lego
- Library of Congress
- Loop
- MaMaMedia
- National Football League (nflrush.com)
- National Geographic
- Neopets
- NickJr.com
- PBSkids.org
- Pingu.net
- Playhouse Disney
- PoissonRouge.com
- Pokémon
- Sesame Street
- Scholastic.com/ispy
- Sport Illustrated for Kids
- Squigly's Playhouse
- ThomasAndFriends.com
- U.S. Mint
- Willy Wonka
- Yahooligans!
- Yoyo
- weather.com
- Yahoo!
- Zeeks
(Plus several other sites visited during Web-wide tasks where the kids could go where they pleased.)
Richly illustrated with 236 color screenshots and sequences of animation frames, showing designs that worked well for children as well as designs that caused them usability problems.
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Table of Contents
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275-page report
- Executive Summary
- User Studies
- Changes over Time
- Children vs. Adult Users
- Age-Appropriate Design
- Advice for Parents and Educators
- Research Overview
- Why Look at Usability for Kids
- Moving Target
- Usability As the Gateway to Content
- Design Myths
- Kids and Technology Today
- Kids' Tech Environment
- Technical Understanding
- How Children Use Computers
- Why Kids Use the Internet
- Parent Involvement
- Land of No Rules and the Role of Metaphors
- Interactivity
- Movement, Sound, Color and Sensory Overload
- Web Savvy Users?
- Comparing Usability for Kids and Adults
- Similarities
- Initial Reaction
- Good Design
- Standardization
- Control
- Technical Interferences
- Differences
- Goals
- Physical Limitations
- Exploratory Behavior
- Scrolling and Reading
- Commercial Awareness
- User Groups: Languages, Genders
- International Differences
- Gender Differences
- Guidelines
- Getting To Your Website
- General Interaction
- Interaction: Pointing Devices and Keyboard
- Forms, Passwords, and Memberships
- Navigation
- Search
- Search Engines
- Search within a Website
- Homepages
- Text
- Kids and Reading
- Legibility and Text Design for Beginning Readers
- Readability and Comprehension
- Instructions
- Images
- Waiting Time
- Animation and Video
- Audio
- Background audio
- Audio Rollover and Sound Effects
- Narration
- Advertisements
- System Errors and Help
- Use of Help
- Alerts, Dialogs, and Technical Problems
- Plug-ins
- Content
- Targeted Content
- Characters
- Methodology
- First Study
- Sites Tested
- Participants
- Procedure
- Testing Environments
- Final Study Structure
- Second Study
- Sites Tested
- Participants
- Procedure
- User Testing with Children
- Designing Usability Testing Studies
- Users' Motivation
- Co-Discovery Sessions vs. Single Participants
- Disclosure Permissions for Children
- Running Usability Studies
- Parents in the Room
- Thinking aloud
- Pleasing
- Compensation
- Card sorting with Children
- Online Concerns for Parents and Children
- What Kids' Caretakers Should Know
- What Kids Should Know
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Comparing the Editions
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If you already own the 1st edition of this report, should you buy the 2nd edition? We recommend this, because there were substantial changes between our two rounds of research, leading to many new or revised guidelines.
Trust us — or check other report descriptions on this site — we usually recommend not buying upgrades, since the usability findings tend to change less between editions than they did for the children's report.
This time, however, the answer is yes, do get the new edition, even if you have the old one.
Comparison of the editions:
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1st edition |
2nd edition |
| Guidelines |
70 |
130 |
| Page count |
132 |
275 |
| Screenshots |
86 |
236 |
| Websites tested |
27 |
56 |
| Age group tested |
6–11 years |
3–12 years |
| Report file size |
8 MB |
25 MB |
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Who Should Read This Report?
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- Anybody who is responsible for the design or strategy for websites that are targeted at children or that have an area or subsite intended for children.
Running a similar international usability study yourself to collect comparative design lessons from a large number of websites would cost about $300,000. You get the findings at 0.06% of the cost.
Please help us continue publish low-price reports by buying a site license if you have colleagues who will read the report. If somebody "gives" you a copy, then please buy a download anyway to keep prices down in the future.
Remember that we don't get any grants or outside support for our independent research, so we depend on your honesty in buying the report to generate the funding for further work.
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Download Report (from eSellerate)
$188 for the PDF file (275 pages), single-user license.
$388 for a site license that allows you make multiple copies and distribute within your organization.
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 Download Time |
| The PDF document is a big file because of the many illustrations (24 MB). Downloads will take a few minutes.
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| Alternative Payments |
If you do not want to buy online, we accept other forms of payment:
- Check
- Bank transfer
- Purchase orders
- Faxed or mailed credit cards
We can also send you a paper invoice if your company requires that.
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| File Format Used |
| The report is a standard PDF file, formatted to print on both 8.5x11 and A4 paper. Any recent version of the Acrobat Reader will suffice to read or print the file. No special software is needed. The file is not copy-protected: we trust you to buy a site license if you are going to have multiple people read the report. |
| Related Reports |
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Other research on Web user experience for young users:
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